Thunderstruck: The Popery of Sect

September 28, 2017

“[O]n what grounds of principle do the denominations around us vindicate their right to exist? To some of the sects this question would come like a thunderbolt. They have never raised it. They never knew that such a question could be raised. In the Sectarian Declaration of Independence, among the certain inalienable rights are sectarian life, sectarian liberty, and the sectarian pursuit of happiness. They may deny a man’s right to wear a coat or a hat not fashioned after the sacred pattern shown them in the mount of their private hallucination, but as to a man’s right to join himself to any sect he things good, or to make another sect if the existing sects do not suit him, of that they never doubted. In the Popery of Sect, “Stat pro ratione voluntas“—their best reason is, they wish it so.”

—from “The Relations of the Lutheran Church to the Denominations Around Us,” by Charles P. Krauth, 1877 (italics original; bold emphasis mine)